The Importance of a Weekly Call to Worship
When you walk into church, find your seat, then the first notes of the music start, and someone welcomes you into the service with our weekly call to worship, this isn’t a message from the heart of a music leader to you. This isn’t something that the elders penned thinking, “Hey this is a really great thing to say. This will be the thing that kind of nudges them emotionally to help them respond in singing.” It is our sole hope and desire for our congregation to see, understand, and glory in the truth that it is God who calls us to worship and helps us in our deficiencies to do so, on the Lord’s Day.
The Truths We Confess In Our Call To Worship
“To all who are weary and need rest,
To all who mourn and long for comfort,
To all who feel worthless and wonder if God cares,
To all who fail and desire strength,
To all who sin and need a Savior,
This church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Jesus Christ,
the Ally of his enemies,
the Defender of the guilty,
the Justifier of the inexcusable,
the Friend of sinners.
Welcome!”1
“To all who are weary and need rest…”
When we say, “to all who are weary and need rest,” we have in mind Matthew 11:28-30 which says, “28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
“To all who are weary and need rest” is a call from Christ to come to Him and find rest for your weary soul.
“To all who mourn and long for comfort…”
Once again, we are invoking the Scriptures as a reminder that it is God who calls us and meets our needs. Jesus Christ, in Matthew 5:4, says, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” Blessed are those who mourn. It’s a call from Christ to come to Him in your mourning and to receive his blessing of comfort. What better place or person to turn to in your mourning than Christ Himself?
“To all who feel worthless and wonder if God cares…”
I grew up in the days where it was cool to have a lot of problems. You know to hate your parents or maintain a “me against the world” mentality. We called it “emo.” I honestly don’t know if that’s still the term, but even our music reflected it. It was like a badge of honor to feel worthless. It’s like if you could feel more worthless than everyone else, then you really had it going on. It’s strange. It’s backwards honestly.
However, the truth is we all feel worthless at times, right? The truth is you recognize that you’re a sinner, you have broken relationships, you’ve caused problems, you’ve messed up—you see those effects in your life, if you’re able to be honest with yourself. In seeing that, you start to feel worthless, and if you’re feeling worthless as you come into church you may wonder, “does God care?”
In Matthew 10, Jesus says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” Two Sparrows sold for a penny. For one penny you can have two sparrows—now, that’s a good deal. But the penny is that thing that you’ll just leave in the parking lot when it falls out of your pocket. You’re happy to offer the penny to the cashier at the gas station for that little cup that sits there. You’re not leaving the $20 bill in there, right? You’re not even going to leave the quarter in there. That tray is for the pennies.
Two Sparrows, one penny. And what does Christ say? Not one of them falls to the ground, not one of them dies apart from your Heavenly Father. What does this mean? It means God controls the sparrows. Jesus is using this illustration to teach His disciples that God controls all things.
If He controls the sparrows, then He controls the last breath my daughter took. And, if He controls the last breath that my daughter took, then He controls the breaths that I take now. He controls every moment of every day. Every millisecond belongs to the Lord. How do we know this? Because He controls the sparrows, that’s exactly what Jesus is saying.
Jesus goes on to say, “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” Some of you might really be into yourself. But I guarantee you didn’t sit in front of the mirror and number your hairs today. Now for some of you, it’s getting easier to do that, but you’re not numbering your hairs either.
What is Christ saying, “God knows you so intimately that He knows the number of the hairs on your head, so not only are the sparrows important to God but the number of hairs on your head are important to God. You are important to God.” That is the conclusion He draws from those two examples. He says, “fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
So, “to all who feel worthless and wonder if God cares,” He absolutely does care.
“To all who fail and desire strength…”
In Isaiah 41:10, God speaks through the prophet Isaiah, saying, “fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
When you fail and desire strength, to where do you go? You go to God. God is inviting you to worship Him. To help you understand the strength of the Almighty at work in your life, He says come unto me.
“To all who sin and need a savior…”
This one affects every one of us. There’s not one of us who walks into church sinless on Sunday. You might walk in feeling strong one day. You might walk in knowing God’s comfort one day. But “to all who sin and need a savior,” that’s every one of us. Every one of you needs the forgiveness of Christ.
Jesus, while talking the Nicodemus, who was a follower of the law, who was doing everything that he could do on his own to earn salvation, to make his way to heaven through his own good works, Jesus says to him, “you must be born again” (John 3:3). Nicodemus responds, “how can I do that?” Jesus replies, “You must have the spirit of God give you a new life” (John 3:5). How is this possible? Jesus says, in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
If you repent of your sins and believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, you will have eternal life.
“This church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Jesus Christ…”
Then our call to worship transitions and essentially says, “to all of those people, this church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Jesus Christ.”
It’s okay for us to have greeters out here who welcome you into the building as you come in. It’s okay for one of our leaders to get up here and say, “We welcome our guests today.” It’s okay for us to be welcoming and warm with one another. In fact, we should be because we have been welcomed by Christ Himself, despite who we are.
However, when we do our call to worship, when we stand and say “this church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Jesus Christ,” we are only able to do so because Christ is welcoming us—therefore, it is truly a warm welcome.
Romans 15:7 says, “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” So, we don’t welcome you into the church for our own glory. What we’re saying is, “We welcome you, as Christ has welcomed us, and we do that for His glory, for the renown of His name, not our own.”
“He is the ally of His enemies…”
Our call to worship now moves to a few short statements about who Jesus Christ is. First, we say, “He is the Ally of his enemies.” Romans 5:10 says, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
There are people setting themselves against God daily—rebelling against Him. God is not their ally in that moment. That’s where the word of warning and the words of admonition come in. But when a sinner will heed the words of warning, when a sinner will hear what Christ says from His word and turn from their sins, in repentance, and turn to Christ, in faith, then Christ becomes the ally of His enemies.
“He is the defender, justifier, and friend…”
Our call to worship finishes with these phrases,
“He is the defender of the guilty,
He is the justifier of the inexcusable,
He is the friend of sinners”
The apostle Paul shows us why it is important to confess these truths, to remind one another of these truths each week:
Romans 8:31-39
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.
Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Christ is our defender. Christ is the one who justifies us. So, then, as sinners saved by the gracious work of God, Christ is our friend.
“Welcome.”
Once finished, we simply say, “welcome.” Why? Because now God has welcomed you. You have been reminded of these great truths of God. Now when you sing praises to the Lord, when you pray together, when you hear the word preached, you’re doing it as those whom God called into worship.
Unless He initiates our worship, there is no worship at all. Once we are called by God’s word into worship then we are welcome to come, we are helped by His Spirit in coming.
Conclusion
In the call to worship, we see God’s holiness and confess our deficiencies—we are weary and need rest, we mourn and long for comfort, we feel worthless and wonder if God cares, we sin and need a Savior. Our deficiencies are clear and yet His Spirit helps us and we are equipped in that moment for the work of corporate worship.
In the weekly call to worship, God calls us to join His work, He hears our cries for help, and He promises to be with us, despite our deficiencies.
1 This Call to Worship is not unique to NLCC. Many churches use a variation of it. I first encountered it through a reading that cited it from Tenth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA.